Stephan El Shaarawy scored a dramatic winner as the Portuguese boss celebrated the milestone with a victory. Roma's win on Sunday saw Mourinho take his career tally to 638 victories, having drawn 205 and lost 157 of his 1000 games as a manager.
The 58-year-old began his coaching career in his native Portugal when he briefly took charge of Benfica in 2000, winning six of 11 matches. Mourinho would also coach Uniao de Leiria before he made his name at Porto, where he won the Champions League and earned the top job at Chelsea. He would coach the Blues for three seasons before he moved on to Inter, winning the treble in 2009-10 with the Nerazzurri.
José Mourinho: “I told everyone lies! I had been saying to the team for days that this 1000th game was not important to me… but I had an incredible fear of losing! Luckily we won and I was running like a child today because I was feeling 12 years old, not 58”. ?????? #Mourinho pic.twitter.com/B0n6UXLGaV
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) September 12, 2021
Speaking to DAZN after the match, Mourinho said: "During the week I was a liar, saying it wasn’t a special match. But it was a special match. It was a match with a special number for me and I always wanted to remember a match like this for my 1000th game. I lied to everyone! It could have ended 6 to 6, 7 to 7, Rui Patricio came up with two miracles, we missed a few goals. Extraordinary game, a tremendous emotion. Today I am not 58, but 14, when you start dreaming of a football career. It was a child’s race, I apologized to Dionisi, they played a fantastic game."
From there, Mourinho took over at Real Madrid and then returned to Chelsea in 2013. He would stay in England for his next two jobs, coaching at Manchester United and then at Tottenham. After he was sacked by Spurs last season, Mourinho returned to Italy and took over at Roma prior to the current campaign.
"This is a very, very good team. I knew that from the first day I started studying them, so these are three truly important points. Maybe someone up there decided I deserved this memory for my 1,000th match."
Comments